Homo sapiens evolved over the course of a few hundred thousand years, and early stages of humanoid-created technology (such as the wheel, fire, and stone tools) progressed barely faster, requiring tens of thousands of years to evolve and be widely deployed. A half millennium ago, the product of a paradigm shift such as the printing press took about a century to be widely deployed. Today, the products of major paradigm shifts, such as cell phones and the World Wide Web, are widely adopted in only a few years’ time.
